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Comment by koheripbal | Hacker News Reader

Elon cares tremendously about bad press. He's specifically banned all reporters from filming launch or recovery attempts in case there are failures.

You'll notice that there are NO social media posts whenever there's a accident (of which there have been many).

Zuck drawing attention to it must have really pissed Elon off.

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Source? Anecdotally speaking, it seems that there's been about as much coverage for each failed launch as there has been for each successful one.

Um, except when Elon posts video compilations of their failures... (seems to me they're pretty open)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2PWKdQzuU8

They do that in a carefully controlled way, well after the event is too cold for the news cycle. And even then, some events that are too dicey-looking are never seen.

Mark, this is not a criticism. Given the way the media handles such things (i.e. sensationally and with minimal or just plain wrong context) it's really for the best.

I'm confused--aren't the launches broadcast live via webstream?

Yes, but landings at sea tend to cause the video feed to go away, and it doesn't come back if anything goes wrong.

I'm sure they have a delay.

I don't understand why this is downvoted. This is exactly how a PR firm or department will handle those things.

What? The general public films all SpaceX launches and all landings on land, not to mention reporters.

>NO social media posts whenever there's a accident

Sometimes there are - in fact its a running joke that he calls them "rapid unscheduled disassemblies" (or something like that).

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